Kissing Frogs Page 2

  The next summer…

  I shut the door behind me and leaned against it, feeling as if I’d just run a marathon. Evading hands that seemed to be everywhere all at once was exhausting. At least the sushi had been good, even if I spent the entire time trying to outmaneuver wandering fingers determined to make their way up my dress. I shuddered just remembering the feel of his clammy hands on my skin.

  Where the hell do they get these guys? My grandmother set me up with this one and I was pretty sure he was closer to her age than mine. I didn’t have an issue with older guys, but I did have a problem with overly handsy ones. I also had issues with guys who insisted on smoking cigars and breathing in my face over dinner, despite no smoking laws in restaurants. When he told off the waitress after she politely asked him to stop and then bitched about her with racial slurs, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. This was the kind of date that made me wonder about Grandma Fi’s mental state.

  Wine would help, so I changed into comfy clothes and headed to the living room. I curled up on the couch with my glass and reached for the remote, fully intending to immerse myself in crappy TV. But, of course, that would be too easy.

  I regretted the impulse as soon as I turned on the TV and found myself looking at Luke. It was enough to evoke homicidal rage, even if I didn’t give a rat’s ass about him anymore. What I cared about was the mountain of debt and the humiliating fallout he left for me in the wake of his abrupt departure.

  Short of becoming a recluse, I couldn’t seem to escape the reminders. He and his band hit the big time and now they were all over the place with their newfound fame. On TV, on the cover of every magazine, on the radio. That was almost the worst of it. Every time I turned it on, their latest single was playing. The song was one he had written for me. He sang it for the first time the night he asked me to marry him in a smoky bar in Syracuse during one of his gigs. Then he dumped me and did a global “find and replace” on the lyrics. Now the song was no longer called “Cassidy,” but “Avalon.” Yes, the bimbo’s real name was Avalon.

  And Avalon was everywhere Luke was, a plastic bimbo draped all over him like the proverbial cheap suit. Sometimes I wondered if the chick had been surgically attached to him. Hell, maybe I paid for that, too, I thought. After all, I’d paid for her boobs. They were porn star-worthy boobs, too, paid for with the money in our joint account, the same money that was supposed to have paid for our wedding. He had mentioned in his letter that he had borrowed "some" money from the account. What he failed to mention was that “some” money was a few hundred bucks over $20,000, most of which was my hard-earned money. And he also failed to mention that most of it was earmarked for Avalon’s fake boobs. But I had to give him credit where credit was due. He hadn’t taken everything; he’d graciously left me with a little bit over $1,200. What a guy.

  It was petty, but it thoroughly pissed me off that he was still as hot as ever, despite the fact that he’d had his image cleaned up. The last of his piercings were gone and so were all but a few of his tattoos. But it didn’t matter because he was still gorgeous enough to make your teeth ache if you looked too long. And I had looked for far too long. I just wanted him to be fat and balding. Was that too much to ask?

  Asshole. I snatched the remote off the coffee table and turned off the TV with no small amount of aggression, tossing the thing out of my reach to avoid further self-torture. I picked up my glass from the table next to me and took a long sip. The asshat deserved the bimbo. I had been there for him, but what appreciation did I get for that? None. I got dumped and he stole pretty much every last dime I had. He deserved a plastic bimbo with no brains and no ambitions beyond fame and money. Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe the bitch got what she deserved when she got Luke. A user and a player. They deserved each other.

  So much for letting it go. I drained my glass and refilled it. I knew I should cut myself off because drinking alone generally made me take a journey down Memory Lane. But desperate times called for desperate measures and I was a self-sabotaging sucker for punishment.

  It annoyed the crap out of me that anything about that jackass still bothered me. It wasn’t that I was still pining away for him. That ship had long since sailed into the sunset. In retrospect, it had been disturbingly easy to get over him in the aftermath of getting jilted. Learning as much as I did about Luke and what he had been up to behind my back helped the process along significantly. Even so, it wasn’t a break-up technique I would recommend to others.

  A few glasses of wine made it easier to admit what the real problem was. The total lack of confidence in myself and my own instincts. My own personal albatross. Every time I saw his face or heard his voice, it reminded me of my every failure. I had been head over heels in love with a guy who hadn’t given a crap less about me beyond what I could do for him. The moment somebody offered him something I couldn’t, he was gone. It was the promise of fame and celebrity that lured him. It wasn’t even really about Avalon. She was just a bonus to his new life, a brainless bitch who told him how great he was and hung on his every word.

  The bitch got boobs and I got to wipe my business account almost clean to pay the wedding bills. But the punishment didn't end there. Thanks to his newfound fame, the tabloids were all over anything that had to do with him and it seemed that most of our graduating class cared more about their own fifteen minutes of fame than compassion for a classmate. So, I got the parting gift of public humiliation as our story was told over and over again with varying degrees of accuracy. Even now, a year later, people either looked at me with pity or made snarky comments behind my back. The bitchier ones made them to my face. It sucked.

  The whole experience had made me not only question my own intuition and judgment when it came to the male species, but my intelligence as well. From time to time, it also made me seriously consider a rather dramatic lifestyle change. One that involved long dresses, sensible black shoes, wimples, and celibacy. The thought of the latter part was the only thing that kept me from running out to the nearest nun recruiting center. Of course, celibacy was only a problem in theory at this point.

  Enough. I had better things to do than obsess over an ass and his plastic girlfriend. If only I actually did have something better to do. Who am I kidding? My sister was always quick to “help,” though. So was Taylor. I suspected that they coordinated their attacks on me. No sooner would one of them be done with me and the other would "coincidentally" start. They both informed me on a regular basis that I was sexually frustrated, which they probably weren’t wrong about. This astute assessment was usually followed with the suggestion that I find myself a pretty boy with muscles and tattoos and have a one last, no-strings-attached roll in the hay to get it out of my system. Then there was a lengthy lecture about the kind of guy that they thought I needed to have in my life the rest of the time.

  Even in this, they generally agreed. They both thought I should be hunting down a professional type. A hipster with a briefcase. A nice, respectable, white-collar man with a hefty 401K, a guy without a single sign of ink or steel, although Taylor wasn’t quite as restrictive as Mac on the whole ink and steel part.

  After a mourning period of about five minutes, they made me their pet project. At first, it was rather entertaining, although they both sucked at matchmaking. But then they enlisted my mother and grandmother to the project, which then became known as Operation Marry Cassidy, and it got to be a lot less entertaining. Now they were all on the verge of driving me insane, throwing one guy after another at me. It was a challenge to have a conversation with any of them that didn't eventually work its way around to the next Prince Charming they had in mind.

  I had said no so many times that they no longer bothered to ask me first. They set up dates with random guys and then told me about it after the fact. They didn’t even try to broker a deal. No, they told me when, where, and who. And, of course, they conveniently “forgot” to have any contact information for the man of the moment. So, I was out of luck whe
n I inevitably wanted to cancel. It was a sneaky, underhanded move on their part, but an effective one. They knew perfectly well that I wouldn’t just leave them hanging, so I got stuck having one bad date after another, tonight’s gem the latest.

  Over time, I began to wonder if any of them knew me at all. Some of the guys they tried to set me up with? Just this side of shady and crazy with a borderline of criminal. And they had to know that pushing me to date these guys wasn’t exactly going to endear me to the idea. It just moved me farther along the path to a life of wimples and sensible shoes. Not that I’m doing any better on my own, I thought as I sipped at my wine.

  To say I was in a dry spell would be an understatement of epic proportions. It was a lot like calling the Sahara “a little bit sandy.” Of course, the fact that I was a tad bit cynical when it came to men might have something to do with my lack of a love life. Nor did I hide my cynicism too well these days. The only men who didn’t seem particularly put off by my attitude were contenders for future inclusion on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Currently, my hot prospect was a super creepy guy named, of all things, Melvin. A name that didn’t exactly inspire dreams of hot, steamy romance.

  Oh, Melvin. He was in his late forties, which would be okay if he fell somewhere in the silver fox group. But he didn’t, not with his pot belly, greasy comb-over, and questionable wardrobe choices. Dad jeans and plaid shirts buttoned to the neck figured prominently in his fashion profile, as did sandals with black socks. I tried not to be superficial, but a girl had to have some standards.

  Melvin was a manager at the grocery store downtown and he adored me… too much. Actually, it was my feet he adored. I wasn’t entirely sure he knew who was attached to them because he never tore his gaze away from them when they were in his proximity. He wasn’t at all subtle about it, following me around the store without even trying to hide. It didn’t seem to matter if he could actually see my feet, although he got positively giddy when I wore flip-flops, staring at my toes and licking his lips.

  But, unfortunately, Melvin wasn’t content with that. A few weeks ago, I discovered surveillance cameras all over my house, all at foot level. To his credit, he confessed everything and now he was a guest of the state for the next two years as an incarcerated felon. It was experiences like that that made me cringe at all thoughts of romance and relationships.

  According to Mac, I was completely close-minded when it came to men, especially the ones they threw at me. Not that I wanted to admit it, but she wasn’t wrong. Lately, she’d been pushing me to try the whole online dating thing, which I avoided like the plague. With guys like Melvin in my real life, it scared the hell out of me to imagine who I’d come up with while trolling the internet. I had watched too many movies and documentaries about online dating going horribly, homicidally wrong.

  But since my real-life prospects were nonexistent at the moment, what did I have to lose besides my dignity? And, perhaps, my life? Sighing, I picked up my laptop from the seat next to me and balanced it on my crossed legs. In seconds, I was looking at a screen full of perfect people, kissing and gazing at one another adoringly. I rolled my eyes in disgust and stifled the urge to vomit. No one looked like that without Photoshop, some serious air brushing, and a heavy dose of happy pills. All of the girls looked plastic, perfect little cyborgs that reminded me of Avalon. Blech. This wasn’t helping my mood in the slightest. I slapped the laptop shut and tossed it back onto the couch. Life in a convent was once again looking pretty good. Besides, at this point, I was an expert at the celibacy part.

  I drained the last of my wine and stood up, mentally giving myself a shake. I wanted more, but I knew better. The last thing I needed in the morning was a massive hangover after a wine-fueled pity party. My love life was in shambles, if one could call what I had a "love life," but I didn't need to advertise it. And tomorrow I was hosting a big family party, a goodbye party for my niece Kyra. She was leaving soon to spend the last several weeks of the summer in France with her other grandparents. I needed my wits about me if I was going to have the slimmest of chances of avoiding lectures from the Four Musketeers.

  It was going to be a full house. Taylor and her husband Mark were coming, since my best friend might as well be family, too. My parents were going to be there, along with Grandma Fiona and her paramour. Mac and her husband Tom were bringing his parents, along with both of his brothers and their girlfriends. Tom called me this afternoon to tell me he was also bringing a friend, some guy new to town, another lawyer he knew. I strongly suspected that he was actually the latest candidate in Operation Marry Cassidy.

  When I asked questions, Tom dodged them, a sure-fire sign that mischief was afoot. Maybe he was guilty by association, since I figured my sister had a hand in this particular invitation. I also had a feeling that the invitation wasn’t as last-minute as Tom claimed. They just held off telling me until it was too late for me to do anything about it. Yet another installment of Operation Marry Cassidy, subtitled “Against Her Will.” After tonight’s date, I wasn't feeling all that optimistic.

  The next morning, I woke up to three simultaneous sounds, any one of which would have been sufficient on its own. My cell phone vibrated against the wood of my nightstand as its ringtone drilled holes in my skull. Someone pounded on my bedroom door, leading me to believe that a SWAT team was trying to break in to arrest me for crimes I didn't even know I had committed. On top of it all was the discordant sound of my doorbell that I suspected was the result of a sadistic asshat leaning on it in a successful attempt to drive me insane. For a blessed moment, the phone stopped ringing, leaving the chaos marginally quieter. But within seconds, it went off again, sounding like an air raid siren in my bedroom.

  Eventually, I realized it wasn’t my doorbell at all, but the alarm clock I didn’t even remember setting the night before. The offending object soon found itself across the room on the floor, still screaming at me. The pounding on the door turned out to be Luna's tail, who clearly didn't give one rat’s ass about the state of my being. If the noise didn't stop quick, fast, and in a hurry, the cops would become a reality because I was about three seconds from committing a violent crime.

  I rubbed my eyes and forced myself awake, throwing back the covers and rolling out of bed. When the world spun, I almost vomited on my own feet. I forced myself to breathe through it and only just managed to keep my stomach under control. Only the cacophony of sound kept me from crawling back inside my bed to sleep away the wooziness. Instead, I shuffled across the room to retrieve my alarm clock, bending slowly so as not to fall on my face. It took several blind stabs before it finally became mercifully silent. I glanced down at it and realized that it was barely five in the morning.

  The phone had finally stopped ringing, but the second I put the clock back on the nightstand, it started again. Whoever the hell thought it was okay to call me at such an ungodly hour was risking their life because I was undercaffeinated and hungover. I answered it with a snarl and discovered that the sadistic caller was Kyra. She spoke so fast that my sleep-befuddled mind had trouble keeping up.

  Because of that, I was certain I heard her wrong. I haven’t had enough sleep. I’m hearing things. It was bad reception on my cell phone. It was brain damage. I thought of a million explanations, ranging from alien mind control to temporary insanity.

  “I want you to take care of Finn, Auntie Cass,” Kyra repeated, dashing my hopes. “For at least a few weeks.”

  Yup. I heard that right. My lovely, beloved niece wanted me to take care of a frog. Not a fluffy kitten, not a cuddly puppy, not even a cute, little hedgehog. A frog. And here I thought she loved me.

  “Why me? I don’t know anything about frogs. And why do you even need a frog sitter? Can’t your parents take care of him?” Please, oh, please. I crossed my fingers, forgetting in my moment of desperation that I was supposed to be the adult in this particular conversation. I would have crossed my toes, too, if I thought I could do it without breaking something. A long-suffering sigh p
ierced the mind fog created by my desperate thoughts.

  “I’m leaving for France in a few days. The Eiffel Tower? Paris? Ring any bells?”

  “You’re hilarious, little girl. I’m well aware you’re going to France. I'm hosting a party for you today, remember? But I'm not sure how you going to France translates into Auntie Cass having to babysit a creature. Again, can't he stay with your parents?”

  “No, he can’t. Mom said she has a bunch of stuff going on over the next few weeks that’s going to keep her busy. And Dad’s got a lot of cases right now. Besides, you know him. He’d never remember to feed Finn.”

  I couldn’t argue that point. Tom was a lawyer in my dad’s firm and my dad was just like him. When he was in the middle of a big case, he’d forget to eat if someone didn’t make him. Score one for the kid.

  “Don’t you have any friends who could help?”

  “Most of my friends are away for the summer. And the ones who aren’t, their mothers won’t let them do it.”

  “I can’t imagine why.” My sarcasm was not subtle. “What about Grandma Mo and Grandpa Colin?” I didn’t know why I even bothered to ask. There wasn’t a chance in hell Mom would babysit a frog, not in a million years. Not even for Kyra. She loved snake-like creatures about as much as I loved those with eight legs. If anything, she was even worse than me. She couldn’t even stand being in the same room with her best friend’s Abyssinian cat because she thought its head looked like a snake. There was no way in hell she would allow a frog in her house. I wasn’t afraid of it, but that didn’t mean I wanted to share space with one unless I had to.